Good riddance, Luigi. Five reasons why 2014 will be The Year of Vita

Pocket Gamer's Peter Willington writes "While we were all (allegedly) celebrating the plumber in green's moment in the sun last year, the PlayStation Vita entered the public consciousness to a greater extent and became home to a surprisingly large number of great indie games. 2014 will assuredly be The Year of the Vita, then. And here's why."

vita is the most awesome gaming handheld ever. Still nintendo ds/3ds has the better library of games. Vita has a relatively low userbase, but that is about to change. With more users comes more games -> everyone wins!

Vita needs exclusive franchises, playable only on itself; not copycat side-kicks of big franchises, unless it brings originality. For example Sony can bring back Legend of Dragoon into PS Vita. Exclusive a new arcade racing...

I fear they will get to thinking remote play will sell the system. I noticed Ready at Dawn, one of their big portable devs is making ps4 games now. It needs more games that are designed with portability in mind, stuff like wipeout and uncharted are good games but feel too console-y.

i agree with this. 3ds still is the best console in terms of its gaming library. the vita will probably end up playing catch up with its main competitor for the rest of its lifetime but i hope that it won't be for a wide margin.

Bought my 3G/wifi Vita for £139 with Killzone/Tennis/8gb Memory. Great price for what I got. And if that was the official price I'm sure more would pick it up.

Then Sony desperately need to cut the price of memory cards, probably by half. They are ridiculous. I want the 64gb card but it cost anywhere between £80-£120 in the UK, so almost as much as the console.

I love my Vita and want it to flourish (as a fan of ALL handheld games, 3DS/mobile included). However, I can't help but notice that none of those reasons include actual games slated for 2014.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of cool niche stuff to play, but the Vita needs great big tasty titles this year, and there's precious little announced in that department.

Oh, and the Unity=loads of developers argument is specious. The Wii U secured Unity support before launch, as did practically every console. It's compatible with practically every platform, that's the whole point. What will bring developers is proven sales success.

I do hope more Unity games come to Vita mind. It's a superb engine that's really going places.

Honestly, if only Japanese devs keep jumping on the PSV a lil tiny bit more and actually localize popular titles (FF, MonHun, Dark Souls, big JP brand type IP's) than that would set a cadence for a greater western expansion going forward.

Which could mean than that western devs like Bethesda and R* taking VITA more serious and actually developing games on it (or at least stuff like Elder Scrolls/GTA ports)

I really hope Sony has some great games for Vita that haven't been announced yet. I would love to see a Kingdom Hearts title (maybe even port both the KH HD collections to VITA), a Bioshock game, and just some other big titles. I like how they're putting out tons of new IPs for the Vita but it needs some system sellers.

Again, Sony isn't taking the Vita seriously with it's only value coming in the form of streaming games from other platforms. The memory cards are still an issue. The lack of AAA studios working on Vita is still an issue. Sony ignored Vita basically the last 3 E3s.

It's a wrap for Vita. You can't have sales worst than the WiiU and see anything but failure.

Video game hardware is not where the money is. Users buying software and accessories is where this business becomes profitable. Many Vita owners, myself included have huge software libraries. I can guarantee you that Sony has made more money off of my Vita ownership than they have from my ps3 and ps4 ownership combined. The number of digital titles I've purchased is extensive. Right now, a large portion of the install base are the hardcore users who will make a lot of purchases.

The issue is not as simple as seeing hardware sales as the de facto level of success.

I disagree wholeheartedly. The Vita has only been around for two E3s. There aren't as many AAA games as we may like, but there ARE quite a few (and it's but like indies and the like don't count). And sales are actually better than the Wii U.

Only the memory cards are still an issue from your list.

Marketing is the Vita's biggest problem right now. Here's hoping they rectify that soon.